Stockholm  - The Swedish Academy, the body that awards the Nobel Literature Prize, on Friday named author and literary critic Lotta Lotass as one of its members.

Elected by secret ballot, Lotass was to succeed long-serving member Sten Rudholm who died in November at age 90.

Lotass, born 1964, lives in the west-coast city of Gothenburg. She made her literary debut in 2000 and two years later published her doctoral dissertation on Swedish author Stig Dagerman (1923-1954).

Dagerman's work has also inspired French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio winner of the 2008 Nobel Literature Prize prize.

Le Clezio last year also won the Stig Dagerman Prize.

Lotass is slated to take her seat on the 18-member assembly on December 20, ten days after the literature prize and other Nobel prizes endowed by Swedish industrialist and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel are presented.

The Nobel award ceremony is traditionally held December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's 1896 death in San Remo, Italy. (dpa)